beef stew

i guess i love beef. i didnt know how much i loved it until i started this blog and got to see how much of it i really eat. and also when i saw a super deal on chuck roast at whole foods and decided to make a quick beef stew - a bourguignon nephew as it were - in honor of my friend charles - who loves beef as much as i. its really easy...

have your butcher cube 2 lbs. of chuck roast or any cheap slow roasting meat. when you get home, salt, pepper and flour them. let em rest and dice an onion, carrot, celery and 2 leeks (soak the leeks for a min and rub em around in the water to get the dirt out of the crevices). sweat them in a dutch oven and add a little sriracha chili and a splash of rum. transfer to a bowl with a slotted spoon and add the beef in batches to brown. then transfer the beef to the separate bowl. add 1.5 cups of red wine and scrape the bits off the bottom and add the beef and aromatics. cover with water and another splash of rum.

you may also want to add flavor with a herb infuser of bouquet garni which is usually thyme and bay leaves wrapped in a leek. i put those same herbs and some orange slices in a big tea infuser for the same effect.

let that cook on low for 1 - 3 hours stirring occasionally and making sure everything is covered with liquid. 30 min before you're ready to eat, take a slotted spoon and transfer everything to that bowl again and remove the herb infuser so all thats left is the liquid. add a cubed piece of white bread and turn your flame to high. stir the boiling liquid until its reduced by 3/4 and add the beef. combine and let it sit for a while on low till... its ready. put it over rice or pasta.

this dish is very pliable and really cheap. i had all the ingredients leftover from the demi glace except the beef which was $12. i added the rest of some yoghurt at the end to make it a little creamy and acidic. anything goes if you cook the beef slow and low.

i love you.

demi-glace

demi-glace takes a lot of time and effort but the reward is peerless. its the base for about 150 different sauces it is basically rich veal stock reduced to a thick syrup. here we go...

roast veal bones in a thick roasting pan at 500 for about an hour to turn the fat to gelatin. then add onions and carrots, turn down to 350 and roast for another hour. transfer to a stock pot and cover with cold water. bring to a simmer then turn it down very low. add a small can of tomato paste and a bunch of parsley, 3 sprigs of thyme and 2 bay leaves (i put my herbs in a big metal tea infuser) cook this way for 12-24 hours, skimming the froth off the top periodically. pull out the bones and strain into another pot and reduce the veal stock till its thick and syrupy. you will need to strain this mixture priodically also.

im gonna freeze this till i need it. we can talk about that later when we have something meaty and fantastic. jummy.

gravlaks

gravlaks is the nordic version of lox - like lox bagel and cream cheese. the swedes used to bury salmon in the sand above the high tide to cure. it literally translates to grave or burried salmon. now, we cure it with salt, sugar and dill. heres how it goes...

get a nice long piece of salmon, preferably a center cut so it can cure evenly and have the monger cut it in half. then combine 1/4 cup of salt and equal parts sugar in a vessel. place one half of the salmon skin side down in a non reactive glazed or glass pan with 2" sides and pour half the mixture over the flesh. sprinkle about 10 or 15 pepper corns on in and cover with most of your dill and a splash of vodka or aquavit. then sprinkle the remaining salt/ sugar mixture over the other half of salmon and place it flesh side down on the other salmon half to make a salmon sandwich. put the remaining dill on top. then cover it with plastic wrap. weigh it down evenly with bricks or cans of tomato sauce and refrigerate, turning once a day for 2 - 3 days.

slice in thin even pieces and place on a serving dish. serve with thin brown bread. i like it with a dollop of Crème fraîche. boop.

polish hunters stew (bigos)

i married a polack. we went to ploand to visit her grandmother in the spring of last year and she made this stew which, in an effort to make her love me, i ate till i almost died. here it is a year later and im craving this near death experience. here it is...

go to the butcher and get the best smoked ham hocks (or alternate smoked pork seasoning product) and 2 big smoked polish sausages which will be pork if they're authentic. get them going in a pot and render out the fat as you rinse and squeeze 3 bags of sauerkraut and cut 2 onions. add the kraut and onions to the pot of smoked pork, salt, pepper and cover with water and a few bay leaves.

cover and simmer for 2 hours and discard the hocks and bay leaves. you can cook a little longer to reduce the water content if you like. its better a day later and can keep for a week in your fridge.

this is simple soul-nourishing food that will comfort anybody with a cold weather country in their blood. polacks do it better!

roasted leg of lamb in a clay pot with raita

it rained yesterday and our house was a little cold so i wanted to slow cook something all day long to make the house smell great and to get an extra heater going. i decided on lamb because i had some pears that needed to be eaten, leftover thyme and onions. heres what i did...

i had the butcher put a basic meat rub on the lamb when i bought it at whole foods and i bought a tub of thick lebaneese yoghurt. i soaked the bottom of my clay pot and into a bowl i chopped 3 small pears, 1 onion, 1 bulb of garlic cut in halves, 2 tsp thyme, 1 tbs orange zest, 1 tsp minced ginger, and 8 quartered new potatoes. i added them to the clay pot and poured 4 tsb of olive oil and mixed with my hands. i then put some rocky mineral rich sea salt, a few peppercorns, a little mustard seed and a little nutmeg in a mortar and pestle and grinded a rub and put it on the lamb and sprinkled the remainder over the aromatics in the clay pot. i placed the lamb on top, covered and baked at 300 for 2 hours.

when i pulled it out there was a ton of sweet lamb-y juice because the pears had melted and the lamb had reduced by half. i took the meat and potatoes out and strained the broth out into a saucier and added a boullion cube and a cup of red wine. as that reduced, i melted 3 tsb of butter in another saucier and made a roux by whisking in an equal part of flour. i then added that mixture into the sauce after it had reduced by a little less than half.

i sliced the lamb, plated it with the potato succatash and sauced it up.

right before serving i chopped some garlic and added it to the yogurt with some lemon juice and finely diced cucumber to complete the raita.

the best bites had a little of everything in it, including the cool raita.

dinner like this can pay back some favors. in fact, think lamb has been a form of currency for most of the world for thousands of years.

ladies lunch

We had a couple friends over for lunch yesterday and decided to make a beat salad. This is a pretty dish and tastes amazing. Here goes...

steam and peal 3 red and 3 golden beats and shock in an ice bath. then slice thin and arrange as shown over a little arrugala or micro greens that have been tossed in a vinnegrette. put a hunk of goat cheese in the middle and put something in the cheese to resemble a bud. i used a candied wallnut leftover from a holiday dish but i thought poppy seeds could be cool too. then pour a little vinnegrette of olive oil, apple cider vinnegar and salt, pepper.

fried rice cakes with cheese, saussage, and bacon

I made 2 cups of white rice last night with 4 cups of the rich homemade chicken stock i had prepared last week. You gotta have this stuff on hand in your freezer. Its basically a bunch of chicken bones (the more the merrier) celery, onions and pepper corns covered with water boiled, strained and reduced. Right when the rice was half done i put 5 bratworst sausages on top to steam for 25 min. I then cut up the sausages really small and mixed in with the rice. Needless to say i had tons of leftovers. then i had a holiday party and derek brought tons of his famous pimento cheese - also tons leftovers.

Heres what i did...

I started 3 strips of bacon in a large iron skillet and rendered the fat out. I chopped the bacon up and added them with 2 eggs, some bread-crumbs, a small amount of thyme and a healthy amount of the pimento cheese into the mixture and made medium sized cakes. I dredged in flour and laid em in the hot bacon fat. i cooked them for 10 min each side and they were cheesey, saussagey, baconey, chrispity, and crazy good.

if we eat like this on a regular basis we wouldn't live very long, but if we eat these sometimes we might live longer then expected.

heres the pimento cheese recipe.

For one batch,

1lb Colby cheese
1lb Sharp or xtra sharp cheddar cheese
2 lg bottles Dromedary diced pimientos
about 1 cup Miracle Whip
Salt and Pepper to taste
Diced fresh jalapeno (optional, I roasted 3-4 in a toaster oven for about 20 minutes on 350 before dicing).
about 1/2 of a lemon

Grate cheese.
Add drained pimientos and miracle whip (and jalapenos, if using)
Add salt and pepper
Squeeze lemon juice onto mixture
Stir with fork to mix
Add more miracle whip if wetter consistency is desired.